FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Maggie Rogers - Heard It in a Past Life
__________
AS she has a new album, Surrender…
coming out on 29th July, I thought I would include Maggie Rogers’ excellent debut, Heard It in a Past Life, in this Revisiting… I have been a fan of the Maryland-born artist for a long time now. Her debut came out in 2019. With the first single from the album, Alaska, released in 2016, there was this build-up to the album. Although it is not unusual for artists to leave a gap between the first single and the album release, there was a lot of anticipation and excitement when Heard It in a Past Life arrived at the start of 2019. I think it is an album that should be played and shared more on the radio. One that was a remarkable debut, but also quite underrated at the same time. I am going to come to a couple of positive reviews for it in a minute. Prior to that, there were some great interviews with Rogers from 2019. She spoke with DIY and discussed how she has transcended the popularity of Alaska and released an album that is astonishing:
“Heard It In A Past Life’ is an album that charts Maggie’s “overwhelming” range of emotions since her 2016 breakthrough when, then a student at New York University, she played her song ‘Alaska’ for a visibly moved Pharrell Williams during a class group discussion. The video went viral and, with it, transported Maggie from recent graduate to upcoming pop sensation in a matter of months. A packed touring schedule followed, quickly followed by an EP, 2017’s ‘Now That The Light Is Fading’, and a career in music that she wasn’t always completely sure was for her.
“I had to learn how to do press and how to talk to reporters and have my photo taken and how to be on the road, but I feel like it’s anyone in a new job, there’s a lot to learn really quickly… I mean that’s the craziest thing, you’re absolutely fucking exhausted,” she admits. “It’s not a natural thing to move every day. That’s why it was so traumatising. I was really tired and there were a lot of people, I dunno, waiting for me to say some dumb shit about Pharrell. I don’t know, you’re going to use that as a quote…” She pauses. “Touring is really tiring. Some people love it, some people don’t. I’m still figuring it out.”
Millions may have watched the video of a then 22-year-old Maggie and the superproducer, but with ‘Heard It In A Past Life’ she’s keen to make her name on her own terms. Possessing an uncompromising direction of creative vision, she names time constraints as the most difficult part of making the album, being under more pressure than ever before to deliver. Her label, she explains, “very much wanted me to have a radio hit or me to go in and write with all these top [producers]. They saw my potential to be a pop star, sort of wanted to pressure me into that and it’s not who I am. I feel proud of the work that I’ve done and I also feel really proud of the lack of compromise that exists on the record.”
She may possess a huge sense of pride in her music now, but Maggie’s future as a performer and producer hasn’t always been a given. She arrived at music via a detour in journalism, interning at Elle and Spin and working as an assistant editor on Lizzy Goodman’s book Meet Me In The Bathroom, a 2001-2011 oral history of rock ‘n’ roll in New York. “I’ve done a fair amount of these!” she says, referring to our interview. “From your side and from mine. It’s interesting, I went through this really long period of writer’s block and I sort of realised that instead of telling my story I could just tell other people’s and that was interesting enough for me for a little while, but I never felt completely fulfilled by it or like there’s a story that I have to tell. And the work I make in music, it’s for me.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five
This awareness of both sides shows - both in the way she pushes for more specificity in the questions she’s asked and seems sensitive to how her words will be portrayed. She’d rather not talk about how she sees her music career expanding over the next few years (“I mean I could bullshit my way through that answer but I think I’d rather not. Leave the future to unfold for itself…”) and, despite having worked with huge pop producers Greg Kurstin, Rostam and Ricky Reid on the album, she’s reluctant to talk about it as a pop record, explaining “I inevitably just believe genre exists to sell music, not to make music…”
She is, however, often refreshingly open about her own struggles, both personally and as a performer. On the day of our interview, it’s not long after her set at last summer’s Reading Festival, where someone accidentally unplugged some of her and her band’s gear, meaning they arrived on stage late and had to cut their set to just a handful of songs. “It’s kind of just how it goes. It’s not worth panicking cause then you can’t really think about it clearly,” she shrugs. “I feel like the only thing to do is be like ‘OK, what’s within my control, and what’s not within my control’.” Not only that, but being scheduled to play at the same time as Post Malone on the main stage meant the crowd was sparser than expected. “[It] was a bummer… If I wanted to make music I thought people were going to like, I would be Cardi B and I’m clearly not. I think she’s so authentic to her, but you know there’s a reason people went to Post Malone’s set and not to mine and that’s ok.”
It’s been a strange few years for Maggie and ‘Heard It In A Past Life’ catalogues that. On it, there’s ecstatic highs but also the sense of fear and isolation that comes with being given an incredible opportunity and finding out it doesn’t necessarily mean everything in your life just falls into place.
“I made the EP so I could try out making pop or making dance music and then actually sort of ended up missing some more human elements,” she says. “So the record is about this crazy time in my life where everything changed and I fell in love and fell out of love and fell in and out of love with music too. I mean, there was a time when I didn’t know if I was really going to do this.
“But I think the record is about me really powerfully and poignantly choosing this and deciding that this is what I love and this is what I wanna do,” she adds, “instead of having the internet really beautifully choose for me”.
I am going to wrap up with a couple of positive critical reviews. Heard It in a Past Life, I suspect, will be a very different album compared to Rogers’ Surrender. A lot has changed in her career and music since 2019. I am really looking forward to what she releases. AllMusic had this to say when they listened to Heard It in a Past Life:
“After she released the Now That the Light Is Fading EP, Maggie Rogers issued a string of singles that hinted she was moving in a poppier direction. However, her debut album Heard It in a Past Life offers a more complete picture of her music that gives equal time to her electronic leanings as well as her folky roots, both of which she combined brilliantly on her breakthrough single "Alaska." That song also appears here, and its effortless blend of styles and Rogers' guileless singing still sparkles. On the rest of Heard It in a Past Life, she finds different ways to forge her own bright, assured version of pop. Working with Rostam and Greg Kurstin among other producers, Rogers fills the album with clever production twists and heartfelt performances. At times, her skill at transforming big emotions into hook-laden songs calls to mind frequent Kurstin collaborator Sia, particularly on "Give a Little"'s call for unity (Rogers was inspired to write the song after a nationwide school walkout in protest of American gun violence) and "Overnight," where she ponders over how her relationships could change in the wake of her viral success. Even if nothing else here sounds quite like "Alaska," Heard It in a Past Life's best songs have as much confidence and originality as the track that introduced her. The album's second half allows Rogers more range, spanning the sensual sway of "Say It" and "On + Off" (another standout that also appeared on Now That the Light Is Fading) as well as the empowering ballads "Light On" and "Fallingwater," an impressionistic collaboration with Rostam that flows and swells like its namesake. While it sometimes feels like Rogers could be even bolder than she is on Heard It in a Past Life, it's a strong debut that shows how well she's growing into her fame as well as all the dimensions of her music”.
To end, I wanted to bring in the review from CLASH. They highlight how there could be cynicism around an artist who went big quite quick. As it is, she is a genuine and incredibly talented artist making music in her own way; her own sound is very much to the fore:
“In a world in which cynicism appears to be everyone’s default setting, it would be easy to write off Maggie Rogers as an industry plant - an artist who seemingly came from nothing, went viral, landed a record contract and the rest is history.
It’s a story we’ve seen countless times before and an argument, used by many, to delegitimise the work of the individual for whom this criticism is often unfounded. However, as is proven on Rogers’ debut release she is, and always has been, more than just the doe-eyed girl that flawed Pharrell Williams in a viral video a few years ago.
The pop sensibilities of the of the now 24-year-old Rogers are so broadly distributed throughout her first full-length LP that the truth is now incontrovertible. Maggie Rogers is in it for the long hall. We first heard evidence of her wizardry in the form of her 2017 EP 'Now That The Light Is Fading', featuring some of Rogers’ best work such as 'On + Off', 'Alaska' and 'Dog Years'.
In the 18 or so months since, she has cultivated a small but indiscreet following, with many comparing her to Florence Welch, Lana Del Rey or early years Laura Marling. Whilst it’s easy to see where these comparisons come from, they don’t really do any of the parties involved justice.
Sure, they all fit under the umbrella of “pretty girls singing folksy tunes” but as any fan of any of those four artists will tell you, there is evidently more to them than that. Rogers proves this throughout 'Heard It In A Past Life', most notably on the runaway stand out track 'Light On' where infectious energy and choppy beats are enough to bob Rogers’ characteristically peppy vocals over some of the prettiest melody you are likely to hear this year.
Other notable cuts include 'Overnight' and 'Retrograde', the latter of which I was praying was a James Blake cover but is, in fact just another of Rogers’ would-be classics. Increasing in familiarity and its endearing nature upon repeated listening, Rogers has released a fantastically spritely and fluid debut album, one that shows off her various talents without doing any of them a disservice.
It sticks in the mind for a good while after and just keeps bringing you back in with fantastic production, brilliant pop songwriting and a central personality as easy to like and support as any on the current music scene.
8/10”.
If you have not heard Maggie Rogers or Heard It in a Past Life, then go and check it out. Building from a stunning debut, Rogers is an artist who should be on everyone’s radars. Heard It in a Past Life is a remarkable debut that I have been listening to since 2019. That is why I wanted to spotlight it here. Go and spend some time with a wonderful album from the…
UNIQUE and amazing Maggie Rogers.